


Gibraltar May Tumble

by Siria



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25787743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: "What time in Malta?"
Relationships: Background Andy/Quynh - Relationship, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 51
Kudos: 414





	Gibraltar May Tumble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/gifts).



> For [Cate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon), with thanks to [Trin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone) for betaing.

**Ṣafar, A.H. 572**  
_Gràttite e zenogge e fatte e lasagne._

The only scars they had were from before they met one another. A thin, faded line on Yusuf's ankle from a childhood fall; a more vivid snarl of scar tissue across Nicolò's calf, where someone else's blade had glanced against him.

Nothing of their history could now be read on their skin, but still, when Nicolò's knife slipped and blood bloomed bright on one finger, he let out a sharp curse. And still, Yusuf picked up Nicolò's hand and took the hurt finger into his mouth, hoping that the heat and the warmth of it would soothe even a passing hurt.

"You know I'm gutting fish, yes?" Nicolò said, a hint of laughter to his voice as he gestured with his free hand at the table in front of him, where the rest of the day's catch and the other ingredients that would become their evening meal were spread out. "That can't taste good."

Indeed it didn't, but that was beside the point. Yusuf released Nicolò's finger with one last, lingering swirl of his tongue, and grinned at how the gesture made Nicolò's ears turn pink. They had been together now for far longer than Yusuf's first marriage had lasted, travelled further across the wide world than either would have thought possible before their first death, fought side-by-side and fucked with utter abandon—and yet somehow Nicolò could still find himself embarrassed at even the suggestion that Yusuf wanted him.

On the street outside, a gaggle of children ran past, shrieking with laughter. The language of these islands was just different enough from that of Yusuf's youth that it was sometimes difficult for him to follow what the locals were saying. But childhood mischief wasn't hard to understand, nor was the insistence of the group's leader that all they had to do was take the goat and—

Their voices vanished around the corner, and with them the details of whatever plan would surely earn a good smack all around before the day was done.

"You have as much good sense as they do," Nicolò said dryly, returning to his work. He finished removing the fish bones with a skilful flick of his knife and set the fillets into the pot before wiping the knife on a cloth and setting to chop some fresh herbs. Yusuf didn't know if Nicolò's manner of cooking owed much to the ways of his homeland—a place that Yusuf had still never seen—but he knew that his love had a talent for making something delicious even out of mere scraps.

"You say I lack sense," Yusuf said, "but here I am, helping to put food on your table, earned from the labour of honest hands—"

Nicolò snorted, and added the herbs to the pot.

"—like the roof that is over our heads." Yusuf gestured at the ceiling and tried very hard not to look at the one corner which leaked copiously during each and every one of Malta's infrequent bouts of rain.

"Truly, one of your great virtues, my heart," Nicolò said solemnly, "has long been your ability to make as much as you can from very little."

Yusuf gasped and clapped one hand to his chest, as if he'd been hit by an arrow.

"Because here we are," Nicolò continued in that same even tone, "stranded for now on an island that neither of us calls home, because someone said _ya hayati_ , these sailors seem like honest men and not at all like pirates, we should give them our money, _habibi_ , and they will not swindle us or throw us into the sea. Someone said that, and here we are, but you are bringing home the fish despite it all."

"Well, I am glad that you recognise—"

Nicolò made a show of looking into the pot. "They are very small fish, though."

"Ah, but if I can make a lot from a little," Yusuf said, shuffling closer to Nicolò, "just think what you can do with the same!"

"Oh?" How Nicolò's glances could still have depths to them that Yusuf had not yet fully explored, even after all these decades, was a matter of some delight to him.

Yusuf nodded firmly. "When I think of who I was before I knew you—before I was a man who could be loved by you—I think, that was a small man indeed. But look what your love has made of me, what your heart—"

Nicolò kissed him, quick and fierce, pressing Yusuf up against the kitchen table, bracketing him with his body. And this Yusuf welcomed, welcomed Nicolò's hands and his mouth and the heft of him, with every bit of joy he could muster.

By the time they were done, the cooking fire had long since burnt down to the merest embers and the flock of children had run laughing and shouting back down the street accompanied by the plaintive bleating of a goat. This, Yusuf thought, running one hand up and down the bare planes of Nicolò's back, was as it should be: let the dutiful things wait for now; let all the world feel as full of happiness as he did.

**May 23, 1987**  
_Son zeneize, rîzo raeo, strénzo i dénti e parlo ciaeo._

Slow dancing was one of the few modern innovations that Joe approved of without qualification: household refrigerators, towering skyscrapers, cheap paperback books, and slow dancing.

They'd eaten a late dinner at a little place on a square just off the cathedral. It clearly catered for tourists, and so Joe and Nicky had pretended to be tourists just for the fun of it: Joe an American and Nicky a West German, the two of them mangling their vowels in a way the waitress completely failed to notice. They left the restaurant full of _torta tal-lampuki_ and wine and amusement at their own cleverness and the kind of giddy relief they often experienced after a long mission. Here Joe and Nicky were, still impossibly alive, still inevitably together, and free to run through the city streets as if they were even younger than they looked.

They hurried up the four flights of stairs to the apartment that they'd rented for the rest of the summer, Joe hot on Nicky's heels. But instead of tumbling into bed together, as Joe had expected, Nicky paused only long enough to grab his cassette player from the kitchen table and then hustled them upstairs to the flat roof.

It was dark up there. Overhead, the moon was a waning sliver, its light glancing off the waves below but not bright enough to illuminate Valletta's streets.

"Terrible sight lines," Joe murmured, shaking his head in mock sadness. "Why do you bring me to a roof that is not easily defensible, my love?"

Nicky snorted, turning on the cassette player. "That's what you want to talk about right now? Sight lines?" He set the player down near the edge of the roof before walking over to Joe. Even in shadow, tired and tipsy and rumpled, Joe found him beautiful. Not attractive nor merely handsome, but beautiful: it was the best word that Joe could think of for how the sight of Nicky always brought him such happiness.

Sometimes, watching Nicky sleep in the small hours of the morning, Joe thought that his bone-deep yearning for him was the best proof for the existence of his own soul.

"Not so much," Joe admitted. Not when Nicky was right there with him, close enough for Joe to wrap his arms around his waist, close enough for Joe to smell the wine on his breath and the soap he'd used earlier. He tugged Nicky to him, letting his eyes drift closed and the music wash over them. An instrumental piece at first; then the familiar warm gravel of Louis Armstrong's voice, reminding them that the Rockies might crumble and Gibraltar tumble but some things would last much longer than mere clay.

Joe smiled and let Nicky guide them into a slow, swaying shuffle. His cheek was solid and warm against Joe's own, his hands a welcome weight on Joe's hips. The music swelled around them, rebounding off irregular roofs and stone walls that still retained something of the day's heat, the notes mingling with the occasional sound of a car engine or a wailing cat. A century ago, two, they would never have thought to dance like this—wouldn't have been able to, unless one of them had sung.

(And Joe loved his Nicky more than he loved his own long life, but even he couldn't claim that Nicky had been blessed with a songbird's voice.) 

The twentieth century had, in many ways, pissed Joe off an awful lot, but he couldn't deny it had its compensations.

The tape eventually came to an end, trailing away in a gentle hiss of white noise before the player clicked off, but they swayed on a while longer while Nicky hummed gently under his breath.

"This was very romantic, _tesoro_ ," Joe said eventually, when a nearby church bell struck the hour. "But now I think I would like to take you downstairs and undress you and sleep the whole night through with you on a good mattress, because it has been a long three months and I am very tired."

He opened his eyes to find Nicky looking at him with that kind of half-smile on his face that Joe had been trying and failing to capture with pencil and charcoal for many centuries now. "I love you," Nicky said softly, and Joe could have danced the whole night through.

**L-Imnarja, 1578**  
_Chi vêu vîve da bon crestiàn, da-i begghìn o stagghe lontàn._

"Let me guess," Josèphe said, leaning back in his chair. "Rabbit again."

"Beggars can't be choosers," Nicolas replied, letting two rabbits drop with a thump onto what currently served as kitchen table, wardrobe, and Josèphe's writing desk. "You know what the markets are like before a big feast day."

"Well, I'm sure they will be delicious," Josèphe said cautiously, eyeing the rabbits. The one nearest him stared glassily back. Even more than Josèphe, it had cause to rue the shrinking of Nicolas' culinary range down to little more than rabbit stew and bread, day after day.

Nicolas had been in a prickly mood when their ship had left Marseille, and his mood had scarcely brightened since then. Josèphe had thought at first that it was the lingering aftermath of their disagreement with the others, but they had parted with Andromache on worse terms before. Not to mention that it was unlike his Nico to keep a grudge.

But they had been here for several weeks now, and Nicolas was still distracted, his words often curt in a way that was highly unusual for him. Josèphe didn't think it was because of where they were—Malta was as pleasant a place as any to pass a few months, at least until the French king wasn't quite so keen to see their heads on pikes—nor could he think of anything he had done to make Nicolas set his jaw so.

Josèphe decided that the best thing to do was to hold his peace. He went back to writing his letter—one of their contacts in Venice was contemplating an expedition to Bukhara and wanted Josèphe's advice—and very carefully didn't watch Nicolas go about his work. When the letter was written, he made a production of finishing it—sprinkling on the pounce, shaking the page, folding it carefully—to make clear that he'd shortly be standing up. Nicolas didn't look over.

Josèphe bit back a sigh and went to stand in the doorway instead. It was time for the procession, which from what Josèphe understood was in honour of both the new harvest and of two of Isa's disciples. He smiled to see the light-hearted happiness of the children, the bright faces of newly-weds in their finery, the bravura of the musicians. Voices were raised in prayer and song both, and even the priests in their embroidered vestments didn't seem minded to stand on ceremony. Josèphe inclined his head respectfully to them as they passed by and the procession continued on its noisy way through the narrow streets towards the cathedral.

"They will light the torches up on the ramparts once dusk falls," Josèphe called over his shoulder to Nicolas. "Will you walk up with me to see?" The last time they had been here, this festival hadn't been celebrated, or at least not in such a manner—after all, then the island had been home to as many mosques as it had churches. He was curious to know what the land would look like from Mdina's great walls, with so many lights and bonfires promising to pierce the darkness between them and the sea.

"Perhaps," Nicolas replied.

He didn't. Josèphe walked up there by himself after their evening meal, and watched from a little distance as the torches were lit and the celebrations started in earnest. He accepted a cup of wine from a beaming matron, and walked along the walls to take in the view; he politely didn't heed the inviting look from one of the town's young beauties, and meandered his way back to the house just as it grew truly dark, deep in thought.

Nicolas was already in bed, though clearly still awake. Josèphe stripped and joined him, letting his body curve around Nico's in a way that by now was as instinctual as the beating of his indomitable heart. Nicolas pressed back into Josèphe with the faintest of sighs. That, at least, was a relief. Whatever it was, Josèphe didn't think that Nicolas had tired of him.

Josèphe pressed a kiss to the cluster of freckles on Nicolas' bare shoulder. " _Habib albi_ ," he said, "tell me."

"Do you remember," Nicolas said, his words muffled by the pillow, "a while ago, when we met those women outside of Marseille?" His body was stiff in Josèphe's arms.

Josèphe nodded. He understood without having to ask that by _a while ago_ , Nicolas didn't mean a couple of months but rather three centuries. _Las donnas de Robaut_ , the locals had called them. Josèphe had never quite understood the Christian admiration for celibacy, but he could appreciate the sincerity of belief that drove those women to live together, dedicating their lives to good works and forsaking their families.

"I thought of _Mayre_ Doucelina as we rode into Marseille," Nicolas said, "and said an Ave for her soul and the souls of her ladies. And I thought..." Nicolas' words trailed off.

Josèphe tightened his arm around Nicolas' waist and waited.

"And then in the city, when we were heading for the harbour," Nicolas continued, "do you remember how we saw that procession?"

Josèphe did: a towheaded girl of some sixteen or seventeen summers at the heart of it, dressed in her finery and head held high, on the last walk she would ever take through the city's streets. Another man who'd stopped to watch it go past had told Josèphe that she was the daughter of a prosperous local merchant, on her way to join the White Ladies of the Abbey of Mont-Sion.

"May the Lord bless and keep the gracious _domaisèla_ ," the man had added piously, before letting out a belch which said he'd drunk deeply at lunchtime.

Josèphe hadn't thought much about it, beyond a passing wish for the future nun's good fortune and an even more fleeting burst of amusement at how little this street resembled Jabel Sahyoun. But Nicolas, clearly, had taken something different from the encounter.

"Yes, sweetheart," he said.

Nicolas twisted around all of a sudden, a flurry of movement until he was facing Josèphe. In what little light filtered in through the bedchamber's single high window, all that Josèphe could truly see of him were his eyes. 

"Am I a hypocrite?" Nicolas spoke quickly now, a torrent of words that Josèphe could barely follow. "Am I faithless? I swore vows, Yusuf, I made an _oath_ , and when I was put to the test I could not keep them. There was a young girl who was walking with a glad heart to be an _ancilla Domini_ , and I saw her and I knew I could never sacrifice as she does because I am a selfish creature. I died and came back to life in the very land where I was taught that Christ died for my sins and in spite of everything, after everything, I—" His breath hitched. Josèphe touched Nicolas' cheeks and found that they were wet. "There is nothing in me that is sorry for it, because I have you, and is that not worse?"

If this were anyone but his Nicolas, Josèphe would have laughed at such baseless fears—but this was Nico, Nicolò, the man whom his very soul was formed to love. Josèphe could tease him, but he could never laugh at him.

"My heart," Josèphe said instead, brushing away his tears. "I have no more answers to our mysteries now than I did when we were young. But I know you as I have never known anyone else. You are no hypocrite, Nicolò, nor are you faithless. You couldn't be, for you have kept a vow longer than any man I've ever heard tell of."

Nicolas made a noise of protest which Josèphe ignored. Instead he leaned in closer and pressed a series of chaste kisses to Nicolas' damp cheeks, to the bristles of his beard, to his soft mouth. "But perhaps," Josèphe continued, "you think a mutual silent vow is not so binding. Very well." 

Josèphe took one of Nicolas' hands in his and pressed it to his chest. He took a deep breath, and cast around for what little church Latin he could remember, to speak a _nikah_ in a way that Nicolas would immediately understand. "Ecce fides mea, quad nullo tempore habebo aliquem in virum nisi te habeam, et accipio Nicolaum carissimum"—he brought Nicolas' hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to his palm—"in fidelum virum meum desponsatum, tenendam et habendam usque ad finem vitae meae."

A shudder ran through Nicolas' whole body. "Yusuf—"

"You have kept faith with me for so very long, my love," Josèphe said. "How could I offer you anything but my whole self in return?"

In the quiet warmth of their bed, Nicolas whispered the vow back to him: took Josèphe for his husband, for the rest of his life. Nicolas' church would never think this a sacrament; no imam or priest would ever bless this union. But Josèphe couldn't bring himself to care, not when Nicolas was murmuring _husband_ against his mouth. What lay between him and his Nico was a sacred thing, and a mystery, and a blessing, and even if no one but the two of them ever recognised that, it would still be enough.

**Three Weeks After the Heist, 2022**  
_Sciusciâ e sciorbî no se peu._

"Well, you are the young one in this relationship," Joe said with an exaggerated shrug, "so any rashness on your part is understandable."

"He's three years older than me," Nicky said to Nile, "and this he holds over me for centuries. _Sei incorreggibile_ , Joe."

"Ah, but you married me," Joe said, with a sidelong look at Nicky, "so what does that make you?"

They were strolling along the city's walls, heading for a hole-in-the-wall place that Nile had discovered a few days ago and that she swore offered the best breakfast she'd had in ages. No one seemed in a particular hurry to get there, though. Nile was too busy watching the way the light was coming up over the sea, Nicky's gaze lingering on how the morning sun made Valletta's ancient stone glow gold, and Joe's attention, as always, as ever, was caught by Nicky.

The eggs could wait.

And, too, there was an unspoken agreement that none of them wanted to rush Andy and Quỳnh. The two women were walking a little way ahead of the rest of them, hand in hand at last and clearly paying attention to nothing else in the world save one another. Joe couldn't begrudge them that, not after everything that they had been through, not when things were still so raw and new between them—not when he couldn't remember seeing such a look of unadulterated happiness on Andromache's face in centuries.

(True, he could perhaps begrudge the fact that the walls in the apartment they were renting were thin, and that neither Quỳnh nor Andy had ever tended to be reserved about their pleasure, not even at four o'clock in the morning, but Joe tried his best not to be a hypocrite.)

Whether by design or because they really weren't heeding where they were going, Andy and Quỳnh veered right instead of left and into a small public garden. Joe and the others shrugged and followed them. So early on a weekend morning, there were few tourists around, just a handful of locals walking their dogs. The scent of the flowers—a jumble of primary colours—was an extra pleasure in the salt air, as was seeing Nicky silhouetted against a blue sky and bluer sea.

Joe stood a moment, eyes closed and head tilted back, and let himself enjoy it: the smells, and the low rumble of the sea, and the knowledge that he was surrounded by his family. Perhaps he'd come back here later today and sketch, try to capture some of this feeling on the page.

"Did you ever think we'd be back here again?"

Joe opened his eyes to see Nicky watching him, his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets and that little half-smile on his face: the same one that so many centuries ago had prompted Yusuf to set all his fears aside and to declare himself to Nicolò.

"No," Joe said, which was the truth. He didn't make five-year plans the way some people did, or live according to the cycle of seasons the way a farmer or a merchant might. He'd long ago realised that for people like them, they could live or they could plan, but not both—and Joe intended to live, for as long as Nicky would have him. Maybe they'd be back on these islands in six months' time, or six years, or sixty. Or maybe once they walked onto the ferry to Pozzallo a few days from now, Joe would never again have Maltese soil beneath his feet—who could know what fate had in store for them?

"But," he continued, "I'm glad to be back here with you, _amore mio_."

"Ah," Nicky said, and there was that little flicker in his smile that meant tease. It warmed Joe's heart to see it. "Because of the rabbit stew?"

Joe spread his hands wide. "What else?"

"Is no one else planning to eat breakfast today?" Nile said, eyes wide. "Because I'd really like some coffee. Well, need."

"Okay, okay," Nicky said, looking chastened, and herding Andy and Quỳnh—who were deep in conversation in a language so old that even Joe didn't speak it—back towards the park gate.

Joe followed slowly behind them, and this, too, was a feeling he would need to sketch. What it was like, to see his improbable family all gathered together. What it was to be back in the place where he and Nicky had loved one another so long ago and so well; back where they had made vows that Joe was so fiercely determined to keep. What it was, to walk on an island in the sun and feel a future stretch out in front of you, bright and unknowable.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Gràttite e zenogge e fatte e lasagne; Son zeneize, rîzo ræo, strénzo i dénti e parlo ciæo; Chi vêu vîve da bon crestiàn, da-i begghìn o stagghe lontàn_ ; and _Sciusciâ e sciorbî no se peu_ are all idioms in Genoese.
> 
> The dominant language in 12th-century Malta was Siculo-Arabic, the ancestor of modern Maltese. Joe and Nicky use terms of endearment for one another in Arabic ( _ya hayati, habibi, habib albi_ ) and Italian ( _tesoro, amore mio_ ). When remembering their time in Marseille, they use some medieval Provençal words ( _mayre_ , mistress/female boss; _domaisèla_ , young woman, esp. one of noble birth) and some Latin ( _ancilla Domini_ , 'female slave of the Lord', used here to refer to a nun but also used to describe the Virgin Mary). A _nikah_ is an Islamic marriage contract, which is generally written but which can also be made verbally. Joe's vow translates from Latin as "Behold my oath, that I will never have anyone as my husband except you, and that I take you, most beloved Nicolò, as my sworn husband to have and to hold until the end of my life."
> 
> L-Imnarja is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (June 29). Rabbit is a major part of Maltese cuisine, while _torta tal-lampuki_ is a Maltese fish pie. 
> 
> Douceline de Digne was the founder of a group of beguines who lived near the Roubaud River (hence "the ladies of Roubaud") just outside Marseille in the mid-thirteenth century. The Abbey of Mont-Sion (Mount Zion, which as Joe notes is Jabel Sahyoun in Arabic) was a monastery of Cistercian nuns (the "White Ladies") in Marseille from the 13th-18th centuries.
> 
> The song Nicky plays for Joe is [Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald's version of "Love is Here to Stay"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIgkIgSZb0I), an extremely Joe/Nicky song.


End file.
